


Spring and Summer

by hofflepomp



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Also i have this headcanon, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Era, DWSA - Freeform, Deaf Character, Gen, I suck at tags, Ilse is a queen, Lesbian Character, Mortiz is a sad boi, Sad, Shh, So Moritz is deaf, These are the characters in DWSA, and that's the tea sis, but then happy!, shhhh I know parts are historically inacurate, that like everyone in priapia is gayyy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 11:23:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16407569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hofflepomp/pseuds/hofflepomp
Summary: Instead of letting him leave her in the woods, Ilse, determined to save her old friend from a fate she sees him going to, invites Moritz to her place in the artists colony.





	Spring and Summer

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like this! Warning though, it is a bit dark and deals with issues like suicide and self deprecating thoughts. Just remember to be careful!  
> Also! I am not d/Deaf and so if I wrote anything offensive or incorrect, please tell me! I use quotation marks even for when the characters are signing. In this, Ilse and Moritz are only signing so I figured that it makes sense.  
> Enjoy!

“Moritz Stiefel?”

 Ilse’s eyes flickered over Moritz. His eyes were wide, and though he knew her, he seemed to flinch at any movement she made. She glanced down to his hands. In his left, he held something. Before Ilse could tell what, it was, he put his hands behind his back and tucked it behind him into his waistband. Ilse looked back up at his eyes. They were dark and scared, like clouds about to rain, full of tension.

“Ilse? You frightened me.”

The two stared at each other.

He was alone, looking disheveled. Perhaps he had run away too. When she had run away, Ilse had no idea what she was going to do. Moritz probably had no clue either.  It was worth asking. Maybe she could help her old friend.

 “What are you looking for?”

“If only I knew.” He swallowed and laughed at the same time while signing, and it came out as an awkward noise that filled the air. He needed help. That was clear. And though she wanted to help him, Ilse was a lone girl, barely sixteen, living by herself.

Ilse swallowed. Living in the artist’s colony, sometimes people would withdraw into their own homes for days and return with some of their best work yet, flowing strokes across canvas, or sometimes it would be their worst work, a sheet of paper with a few words scribbled on it, stained with their blood. And they would never be seen again.

What Ilse was worried about was that Moritz would want to do something closer to the latter, after doing the equivalent of withdrawing into his home, for he could not do that. He had no home. So to the woods he came, whether to produce good work or bad, and into Ilse he ran.

It was up to her to stop him, no one else was likely to listen to him. None of the adults cared, if she remembered correctly. Stories from her older brother when she was younger and still living at home, before her father turned into a terror. Stories of girls not being told how things worked and getting in trouble, of boys being too brash once they realized that the world was their oyster. The bad results following. Every group of children before, things like this would happen.

“The what’s the use of looking? I’m on the way home. Want to come?”

“I don’t know.” He seemed so lost…

And Ilse was worried it would happen again, was happening again. A sudden memory struck her, from when she and all the others were younger, were better, were happy, of all the kids getting together and playing pirates. Otto always insisted he would be captain. God, how she hoped the others were still that way, but the last few years had forced Ilse to grow up quickly. In Priapia she had access to books and learned and read and filled in the gaps of her education spent learning how to be a good little girl with her legs crossed and cute braids. She wore her hair short now. Oh, but there was always a price she had to pay to the artists. An eager young girl comes to their colony, and all they want is to take, so they did, and they both got what they wanted in the end.

She and Moritz had not exchanged any more words, both lost in thought. He started to walk away. And with his back turned, she was able to see what had been in his hands, now carefully tucked into his waistband and she realized that no good work could come from this.

Ilse hugged her coat around her and walked forward briskly, in front of Moritz. She wouldn’t let him hurt himself, it was a mistake. Running was the best move she had ever made, but facing death was never good to do.

“God, you remember how we used to run back to my house and play pirates? Wendla Bergmann, Melchior Gabor, you, and I?”

He slowly nodded.

“I’ve um, actually been pretty okay recently despite looks. I’d say every few days is good?”

Moritz simply looked at her, not getting what she was trying to get across.

“Its been like bad days have been windy, they push through, and even though you can shield yourself inside, they still happen. A few trees get knocked over.”

Moritz held her gaze, and in front of him, he may not have even realized he had done it, his hands signed in small gestures that he must be living in a tornado. Ilse’s eyes flashed.

“Sometimes it’s like I’ve been in a windstorm, and I can’t get back up, but then the next day, it’s like it’s spring again. I just don’t know when that is going to happen, so I always try to wait. And then, um. It gets better Moritz.”

And Moritz finally got it.

“You were saying about going to your place?”

Ilse laughed, this time not out of awkwardness. She held out a hand and led the way.

. . .

Moritz was sitting in a small cabin with Ilse while she prepared him a cup of tea. His shoes were off on the rug, just a quilt thrown over the hard wood floors. The entire scenario was extremely improper, and when Moritz protested over going in, Ilse said it was fine, nothing in a sexual nature was to happen, and she really only liked girls anyway.

Sitting on a stool, Moritz pondered this. Growing up, all the adults in his life told him that his was wrong, and once when he was eight a man in town was accused of being a homosexual and was executed. But Moritz himself had no problem with it. What reason was there?

He had seen the way Hanschen looked at Ernst, the one time his face softened. And in the essay Melchior gave him, there were instructions on female intercourse and male intercourse as well as the normal kind.

So Moritz decided he didn’t care who Ilse liked romantically or sexually, as she brought him his cup of tea and she sat on the floor.

Ilse explained her life with the artists in Priapia, and how they abuse her like her father did, but here at least she gets some agency over her life.

In the colony, she worked as a model and gets a humble amount of money from that. And though she will have to sometimes rely on doing sexual acts for money or favors, Ilse was content. Moritz wondered if he would be able to find a life here.

He was never really one for art, it would make him crazy. Blobs of blue and gold and red smeared across thick white paper with a special name and being told that it reflects on the meaning of life, that was nothing to him. Maybe to people like Ernst it would be nice, but Moritz knew better.

As Ilse finished her story, Moritz spoke up. “I don’t think I can stay here. And I’m not sure that you should either, Ilse.”

“What do you mean Moritz? I’m happy here. I said, back in the woods. I’m happy about every other day, and when I’m not, I just let it pass through.”

“You… I don’t know. I get a bad feeling from this place. Like people are mocking you. Letting a sixteen-year-old girl live on her own? I find that unreasonable.”

“Oh, so that’s what this is about.” Ilse sighed crossed her arms. “If I weren’t a girl, then, would this be fine? Because I’ve been better then ever these past few months.”

“No!” Mortitz shook his head rapidly.  “I don’t think that way at all. I meant, they abuse you like that, take advantage and such, but let you stay here, don’t you think that’s a little fishy? That eventually they won’t want anything more?”

Ilse considered. Moritz could see on her face, and under her lips that she was talking to herself, and he prayed (despite Melchior’s insistence that god was not real) that she would come back to the city with him. He had no idea why she ran away in the first place.

She looked up at him. She shook her head. Ilse lifted her hands and quickly signed to her old friend, who she had just saved, three words, that made Moritz even more confused.

“I can’t go back.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeet that was one hecc of a ride! I'm debating adding more chapters, should I? I probably will.


End file.
